DDMWorks Tunes 700hp Ariel Atom

There's something deliciously bonkers about the Ariel Atom. Even the latest Atom 3 only produces 245 horsepower from its 2.4-liter Honda inline-four, but it still manages a 0-60 run in less than three seconds. Then Ariel built the Atom 500 with a tiny 3.0-liter V8 packing, as the name suggests, 500 horsepower for a face-warping 2.3-second 0-60 run. Ariel achieves those figures thanks to the Atom's low curb weight. In other words, it's absolutely insane. But there are always those for whom too much is never enough.

Those guys, it turns out, live in South Carolina. Their company is called DDMWorks and their product is the Atom 700. Yes, that's right: they've squeezed 700 horsepower into a vehicle that's barely more than two superbikes strapped together. To get there, DDMWorks has swapped out the 2.4 for an even smaller 2.0-liter Ford Ecotec four, twincharged it with both a turbo and supercharger, coated the pistons in ceramics, replaced the connecting rods, the injectors, the heat exchanger, the intercooler... pretty much everything.

The result is (quick calculation, carry the two, divide by Pi) 350 horsepower per liter, which would give even the Jaguar and Williams engineers working on the C-X75 what to think about. Its 2.07 lb/hp rating, incidentally, is even better than the BMW sportbike we reported on earlier. No word on performance or pricing figures just yet, but you can bet both will be suitably catastrophic.